In a fresh round of layoffs Friday at the St. Catharines Standard, 10 pre-press and composing room employees were told their jobs are being eliminated and the work transferred to the non-union Welland Tribune plant. The St. Catharines pre-press/composing department, however, is the most efficient and best run of the three Osprey papers in the Niagara Region, including the Tribune.

"The company's setup of a centralized composing room in Welland took us completely by surprise," says David Esposti, a TNG Canada/CWA Staff Representative.

He notes the irony of the composing room pink slips being issued two days after TNG Canada members in four cities staged lunchtime protests against the company's outsourcing of classified advertising and circulation jobs to non-union call centres. Osprey set up the call centres in Niagara Falls and Sarnia last year and staffed them with low-paid, part-time workers who receive no benefits.

The first round of job cuts just before Christmas led TNG Canada/CWA to estimate that up to 100 jobs could be eliminated at the nine Osprey dailies where the Guild has members in classified and circulation departments. It hadn't anticipated the composing room job cuts.

As far as the Guild can ascertain, no non-union jobs have been eliminated at the Osprey chain, which dominates the small-town Ontario newspaper market with its more than 60 publications, including 21 dailies and dozens of community newspapers.

Friday's layoffs, which also eliminated four positions in the circulation department, bring to 22 the number of Guild jobs that have been lost in three months, says Brenda Halden, president of the St. Catharines Typographical Union.

She is one of 21 Guild members remaining at the paper, where management is now ignoring the Local president's seniority rights in allotting hours and setting days off and shift schedules.

"I have 39 years of service and have now got to work the bastard shifts, which I did for 14 years before I was able to claim shifts and (days off)," says Halden. "I have to do it for now as they are just looking at anything to get rid of me, then there will be no union. But I'm not giving in to them. I will do what I have to do to help whatever members are left and the union as a whole," she says.

The company's founder and CEO, Michael Sifton, makes no secret of his dislike for unions. In a June 2003 Ryerson Review of Journalism profile headlined "Lord Sifton of Fleet?", the fourth-generation newspaper owner says that attitude was instilled in him by his father, who had a paternalistic management style. "We worked very hard to keep (the family business) non-union," he tells the interviewer.

More than 100 people, including members of the district labour council, turned out last Wednesday in St. Catharines to protest the outsourcing of jobs to the call centres. The information picket was part of the Guild-sponsored Keep Our Newspapers Local campaign launched on Feb. 13. Simultaneous protests were staged at the Sault Star, North Bay Nugget and Sudbury Star, all of which have lost Guild jobs or soon will.

At the Kingston Whig-Standard, where a half dozen circulation and classified ad jobs have already been cut, the company is now targeting Guild members in the newsroom. Negotiations to renew the contract that expired in January opened recently with management demanding elimination of a clause that limits the newspaper's use of freelancers.

Paul Schliesmann, vice-president of the Kingston Typographical Union, says unlimited use of freelancers is just another form of job outsourcing. All Guild members in the editorial department are withholding bylines in protest and as a show of support for their union colleagues at other Osprey newspapers.

For background stories and links to the Ryerson Review of Journalism article, visit www.cwa-scacanada.ca/osprey.

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